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Know Your Place

The problem with this industry is everyone thinks they are an expert. They garner this viewpoint from a narcissistic need to be heard.

Avoiding the scam

It should come as no surprise this is common practice in almost every industry. People who find the unsuspecting and uneducated to prey upon. I have fallen victim to it myself as I’m sure most who are reading this blog and have come to understand there is a lot more to the game. There are professionals and then there are the hobbyist. I have nothing against the hobbyist, they serve a valuable purpose. What I mind is the incessant need to by something more than a hobbyist. There is no middle ground, you are either a professional or a hobbyist…period.

Not everyone has the same opinion

With that being said, each has an opinion, for that matter everyone has an opinion. I’m going to say the opinion carries as much clout as the experience used to generate said opinion. In other words, your opinion is commensurate with the time you put in to accumulate your opinion. There is such a thing as seniority, yet in this industry we don’t discuss it, we don’t pay head to the blood, sweat and tears given to obtain the experience. Often times, those who have obtained that experience don’t talk about it so I can see how it may be difficult to discern the difference. I heard a quote years ago about how people will drink sand thinking it is water, they drink the sand because they don’t know any better.

Judgement-free…not

I value people’s opinion just as I expect people to value mine, but I will also judge a person’s opinion by their experience. Yes, I do judge and so should you. You should judge people off the words they say as it relates to the action they perform. I recently had an example of both the good and bad in this context. One was from someone in the industry who while an important part of the industry is not a professional trainer. When discussing technique I listened to their preferred method and asked some penetrating questions. It was then I realized they were missing much of the problem and rightfully so, it is not their main occupation. The other was a student in a class who failed to recognize his position in the chain of command.

Unteachable and then some

Trying to work with students is always challenging, especially when they reach the point of Unteachable, see this blog for more information. I did value his opinion since I valued him as a professional, but his opinion was formulated on far less experience than my own. It eventually got to the point where I had to remind him of that in order to get through and even then there was still resistance and he failed to reach his performance potential. By the time he was able to recognize his position and work towards making progress the day was over. Just when he started to see the light, the train at the end of the tunnel smacked him in the face.

People have worked hard to gain their experience in their chosen profession and to discount it because you think you know better or are some type of weekend warrior is insulting not to mention a waste of precious resources.

'The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions." Leonardo da Vinci, artist, scientist and inventor